Cajamarca Gabriela, Proust Valentina, Herskovic Valeria, Cádiz Rodrigo F, Verdezoto Nervo, Fernández Francisco J
School of Mathematical and Computational Sciences, Yachay Tech University, San Miguel de Urcuquí 100119, Ecuador.
Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.
Healthcare (Basel). 2023 Nov 3;11(21):2897. doi: 10.3390/healthcare11212897.
Multimorbidity is defined as the presence of two or more chronic medical conditions in a person, whether physical, mental or long-term infectious diseases. This is especially common in older populations, affecting their quality of life and emotionally impacting their caregivers and family. Technology can allow for monitoring, managing, and motivating older adults in their self-care, as well as supporting their caregivers. However, when several conditions are present at once, it may be necessary to manage several types of technologies, or for technology to manage the interaction between conditions. This work aims to understand and describe the technologies that are used to support the management of multimorbidity for older adults. We conducted a systematic review of ten years of scientific literature from four online databases. We reviewed a corpus of 681 research papers, finally including 25 in our review. The technologies used most frequently by older adults with multimorbidity are mobile applications and websites, and they are mostly focused on communication and connectivity. We then propose opportunities for future research on addressing the challenges in the management of several simultaneous health conditions, potentially creating a better approach than managing each condition as if it were independent.
多重疾病状态被定义为一个人存在两种或更多的慢性疾病状况，无论是身体上的、精神上的还是长期的传染病。这在老年人群中尤为常见，会影响他们的生活质量，并对其照顾者和家人产生情感影响。技术可以实现对老年人自我护理的监测、管理和激励，同时也能为其照顾者提供支持。然而，当同时存在多种疾病状况时，可能需要管理多种类型的技术，或者让技术来管理不同状况之间的相互作用。这项工作旨在了解和描述用于支持老年人多重疾病管理的技术。我们对来自四个在线数据库的十年科学文献进行了系统综述。我们审查了681篇研究论文的语料库，最终在我们的综述中纳入了25篇。患有多重疾病的老年人最常使用的技术是移动应用程序和网站，并且它们大多侧重于沟通和连接。然后，我们提出了未来研究的机会，以应对同时管理多种健康状况时的挑战，有可能创造出一种比将每种状况当作独立情况来管理更好的方法。
